President Joe Biden's re-election campaign warns Americans that sometimes people “forget shit” after a special counsel report continually cited the president's failing memory. one staff member told Politico Playbook.
Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report Thursday into Biden's handling of classified documents, but Biden chose not to file criminal charges. During a meeting with his lawyer, Biden forgot when his vice presidency began and ended, and when his late son Beau Biden died, according to reports. . In response to this report, one of the Biden campaign officials said, Said Politico's strategy says that the president's age will not disappear from the campaign.
“The fact that he's a senior citizen doesn't go away,” a Biden campaign official told Playbook. “What I said to my colleagues is we all have to remind the American people that sometimes we forget shit.”
US President Joe Biden speaks in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on February 8, 2024 in Washington, DC. Biden cited the special counsel's report on the handling of classified materials and the state of the war in Gaza. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
The special counsel's report makes a number of statements about Biden's seemingly impaired memory, and if the president were to appear before a jury, he would describe himself as a “sympathetic, well-intentioned person with a poor memory.” He added that he would be shown as a “bad old man.”
The president appeared at an unexpected and unusual press conference on Thursday after the report's release to defend his mental competency. However, during the press conference, Biden made several gaffes, including confusing two foreign presidents and forgetting the name of a parish.
Recalling his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, Biden referred to him as the “President of Mexico.”
Biden held a short but angry and incoherent press conference after the special counsel found that Biden “intentionally retained and released classified material” and called Biden “an old man with a bad memory.” .
It didn't work, so I'll share the full text. pic.twitter.com/ncstumQj13
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 9, 2024
Recently, the president has mentioned deceased world leaders during several campaign campaigns. During a campaign event on Sunday, Biden appeared to accidentally confuse French President Emmanuel Macron with the late former president Francois Mitterrand, who died of prostate cancer in 1996. Biden made a similar mistake at another campaign event Wednesday. The president said that during the 2021 Group of Seven Summit, he spoke with the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017.
After being asked about a number of gaffes, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pulled a page from the Biden re-election campaign's playbook and read a prepared list of the number of gaffes made by various Republicans. , demonstrated how common these gaffes are.
KJP just read out a prepared list of instances in which Republicans have confused names and mixed up individuals in order to claim that Joe Biden is perfectly mentally healthy.
She herself stumbled over her words while practicing this. pic.twitter.com/1tVKyUyca1
— Dylan Housman (@Dylan_Housman) February 8, 2024
“But Sean Hannity himself said Matt Gaetz was Jason Chavez. I mean, it happens. It really does happen. Rick Scott wants to save Medicare money and cut Medicaid. You're confusing that — Medicare, sorry. And this thing happens. It happens to all of us, it's common,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that when Speaker Mike Johnson mentions Israel, He added that he mentioned Iran.
“But let us not forget what he has to say about the overall Arch theme, our leadership on the world stage,” the spokesperson continued.
